Saturday, December 1, 2012

Shadowrun Rat's Nest: Scams

If there is one system that I love but never wanted to GM, it's Shadowrun. All those sourcebooks that you need to have read to keep your players from coming up with gimmicks, weapons and whatnot that will destroy your whole story. All those special things the characters can do and buy...hackers, mages, riggers, cyberware in general. No, thanks.

I found myself GMing Shadowrun all the same last Monday, with only a couple of hourse of preparation. It went pretty well, except for the fact that I had to cut the story a bit short because I didn't have enough time to come up with a complete run. It was more of an introduction or a setup for the actual run.

I had two players and they played a Glim Dropper scam on the owners of Rikki's Rathole, a talismonger/bookshop. That worked out well enough, but the scam was recognised by one of the patrons of the shop. The guy, an Ork named Jacob, confronted one of the PCs and demanded the commlink number of her partner for his silence. She gave it to him and it turned out that Jacob was planning to pull a big-time scam himself and he's looking for more people. A write-up of the evening is here

So far, so good. I had GMed myself into something of a corner, though. I want the scam to be elaborate, think The Sting. That is not easy and I have only a week to come up with the whole thing. Three days as of today, actually, we play again on Monday. Nothing like last minute panic to get creative.

It will be a scam in a scam in a scam. The mark is a big-shot corp exec who loves gambling a bit too much, so he will be interested in some sure-fire bets. The PCs and their fellow scammers can offer that and will have to set up a believeable operation that looks good enough that the mark won't smell a rat.

When he has placed the bet, he will be approached by one of the PCs who tells him that he's getting scammed. There's no way of getting his money back with only an hour or less until the game, but she has insider info who will actually win and will share it for a cut of the profit. The mark will have to wager quite a sum to win back his first wager and to get out ahead, but he shouldn't have much of a choice.

So they go and place the second bet, only to be surprised by the other scammers who don't react well to being sold out. Something like a shoot-out would be nice. In any case it should be dramatic enough that the mark will only want to leave and be glad to escape with his life and without falling into the hands of the police. If the scammers can arrange it that the mark finds himself in a situation where he can be blackmailed, that would be an added bonus.

This is my plan so far. The whole scam takes a lot of money to set up and the scammers are getting backed by the Irish mob who want their share of the profits. If they can deliver a cause for blackmail, the scammers get to keep all the money. If my players go along with this, I'm good. If they come up with something different or add their own twist to the story (and I'm sure they will), even better.

I have a handful of NPCs, a list of names in case I need more, some locations and a rough idea of what is going to happen. I think I'll leave it at that despite my urge to make more plans.